Ornoth

Every time I venture into the job market, I’m shocked and more than a little insulted by the job titles on offer.

Let’s be clear. I am a professional software engineer focusing on user interface design and development.

I am not a Ninja or a Jedi. Nor am I a Rockstar or a Guru or a Wizard. I am neither an Animal, a Unicorn, nor a Unicorn Tamer.

And yet, those are words I’ve seen employers choose when posting job openings in my field.

“Sure”, you say, “but those are just metaphors. What they really want are the best coders they can get.”

By way of reply, I ask you to consider the primary attribute of a person who would respond to such an ad. While confidence is usually considered a positive trait, someone who thinks of themselves as a ninjajedirockstarguruwizard clearly lacks the perspective and balance that comes with an equal portion of humility. Whatever the term, employers who use such superlatives are communicating that the primary trait they are looking for is arrogance.

“They’re just looking for energetic, motivated, go-getter types,” you counter. “And is arrogance really a bad trait for a coder?”

Absolutely!

First, let’s dispel the myth that arrogance (or even confidence) is correlated with competence; it isn’t. That’s a simple association fallacy. While confidence can be the outcome of competence, confidence can just as easily be a symptom of delusions of grandeur. And I know plenty of workers who, despite their obvious competence, struggle with their self-confidence.

With arrogance comes a disdain for others which easily hardens to contempt. With arrogance comes technical hubris and the belief that anything done by other employees (and certainly other companies) is inherently flawed and inferior. If you’ve been around the software industry for any time at all, you will have seen countless examples of NIH Syndrome (Not Invented Here). Arrogance is the most pervasive threat to any business process that is based on teamwork, knowledge sharing, and mutual respect.

When I see a developer exhibit arrogant behavior, it’s usually because they lack the perspective that comes from real-world experience; they haven’t been in the industry long enough to be confronted with their own mistakes and realize their fallibility, nor to appreciate the ingenuity and expertise of other practitioners. If I’m really looking for the best coder I can find, I’m going to hire someone who has made their share of mistakes, acknowledged them, and been willing to learn from them and improve their skills by asking questions of others.

As you might imagine, I don’t consider myself a ninjajedirockstarguruwizard. Having successfully derived my livelihood from software engineering for the past thirty years, I have a pretty accurate understanding of my strengths, weaknesses, and the value I can add in any given situation. I do not hold the arrogant self-opinion these employers are looking for, nor do I want to work with colleagues who do; so as soon as I see such superlatives in a job listing, I simply delete it, unread, and move on.

There are additional reasons why I immediately reject such listings. By putting so much emphasis on the search for ninjajedirockstarguruwizards, employers are revealing some ugly things about their internal culture.

First, the company is exhibiting as much arrogance as the people they hope to hire. They believe that the company will (of course!) be compellingly attractive to the best coders in the industry. They think the best and brightest will be satisfied with the corporate culture, working environment, compensation, and growth opportunities that they provide. Ironically, once you look behind the curtain, you’ll find such companies rarely live up to their inflated self-opinion.

Second, the company devalues women. Immature titles like Ninja, Jedi, Rockstar, Wizard, and Guru generally don’t appeal very much to educated, professional women, who have struggled to be taken seriously even within their field. The few women who do interview probably won’t manifest the kind of arrogance that the company associates with “quality”. One further wonders what Asian expatriates must think of the casual use of culturally-appropriated terms like “ninjas” and “gurus”.

It’s unassailably clear that all those super-heroic job titles are designed to appeal specifically to adolescent boys. By emphasizing those terms in job listings, a company is telling me that their managers generally think of their development teams as a bunch of immature adolescents, and that I can expect to be treated in a correspondingly condescending fashion.

Sure, perhaps I’m being a bit humorless, but that’s just insulting, and not an experience I want to subject myself to. So I don’t.

Finally, I just want to confirm that the “Overly Zealous” and “Cookie Manipulator” in the title of this post did indeed appear as titles in job listings I’ve recently seen, along with “Enthusiastic”, “Audacious”, “Visionary Game-Changer”, “Badass” and “Programmer Extraordinaire”.

And one job specially asked for an engineer “with more cowbell!” (their exclamation point). Plus, believe it or not, one company sought a “Ruby Eating Python-o-saurus Rex”. What! The! Fuck! Yeah, that really shows that you will take me, my career, and the contribution I make to your company seriously.

And final (dis-) honorable mention goes to the listing for a “Principle Systems Engineer” (sic). I’m absolutely agog imagining what duties that might involve…

Update: My followup post contains a list of the more effusive job titles I saw during the two months subsequent to this article.

Is it hypocritical for newspapers to tout themselves as defenders of the English language while simultaneously butchering it whenever it is convenient?

Here’s a selection of recent headlines from the Boston Globe. You’ll note the grammatically egregious use of “slay” as a noun and/or adjective, rather than the proper nominal/gerund form, “slaying”.

IN SLAY CASE, NYC POLICE SEEK CLUES AT BAR SITE
SLAY VICTIM, 24, MOURNED IN BOSTON
‘SCHOOL CAME FIRST’ FOR NYC SLAY VICTIM, 24
OFFICIALS POINT TO SLAY CASE SUCCESSES
HUNDREDS PAY TRIBUTE TO SLAY VICTIM
GAS STATIONS ARE A FOCUS IN SLAY PROBE
PROSECUTORS SAY OTHER VICTIMS POSSIBLE IN N.H. SLAY CASE
BAIL SOUGHT IN 33-YEAR-OLD SLAY CASE
REWARD MONEY OFFERED IN PROBE OF NYC SLAY CASE
JUSTICE WILL PREVAIL IN THE HOPKINTON DOUBLE-SLAY CASE, VICTIMS’ KIN SAY
SLAY CASE MYSTIFIES A MAINE RETREAT
WEAPON FIGURES IN SLAY TRIAL
JURY SELECTED FOR TRIAL IN ’03 SLAY CASE
DEATH PENALTY RULED OUT IN GANG SLAY CASE
BAIL STAYED FOR ACCUSED IN TRURO SLAY CASE
SLAY CHARGES DROPPED VS. HOMELESS MAN
CHARITY HONORS SLAY VICTIM’S EFFORTS
SLAY SUSPECT OUT ON BAIL
OFFICER GRANTED BAIL IN GANG SLAY CASE
SLAY VICTIM MOURNED IN NEW BEDFORD
2D SUSPECT ARRESTED IN MBTA SLAY CASE
FORMER CORRECTION OFFICER PLEADS GUILTY IN SLAY PLOT
SLAY VICTIM’S GOAT BRINGS COMFORT IN E. FALMOUTH
MAN FOUND STABBED IN DORCHESTER IS CITY’S 27TH SLAY VICTIM
DEFENSE EYES DNA IN TRURO SLAY CASE
SLAY-PLOT SUSPECT EJECTED FROM COURT
FBI SEEKS MEETINGS WITH R.I. POLICE ON SLAY SUSPECT’S ARREST
SLAY SUSPECT ARRAIGNED

So an individual can be suspected of slay, be charged with slay, and be arraigned for slay. One can plot slay, probe slay, investigate cases of slay, and try slay. And believe me, we’re all victims of slay.

Obviously, this isn’t a case of one headline requiring a tweak, nor is it the doing of one marginally literate writer. It’s a systematic practice in which the Globe’s demonstrates its inability to write headlines in coherent English.

The Globe’s presumed justification for this practice would be that it is impossible to use proper grammar in their headlines, due to space constraints. However, one of those headlines is no less than 72 characters long. If we take that as a theoretical maximum length, then not a single one of the other 27 headlines would exceed that limit if we were to add the three-character “-ing” suffix that would make “slay” grammatically correct. So what, exactly, is their justification for this wanton butchery of standard practice? Answer: there is none. It is pure and utter caprice, reinforced with the weight of bureaucratic hubris.

I pointed this out in an email to the Globe’s so-called ombudsman two years ago. “Thanks for the course correction on the use of ‘slay’ in headlines. I’ve given the headline bosses the benefit of your wisdom.” In other words, “Fuck you very much; we’ll do as we please.” Proper grammar has no place in the Boston Globe, except when it can provide some entertainment value, in which case it is conveniently relegated to their weekly “The Word” column.